Within the field of user interfaces, many scenarios involve a presentation of a virtual environment. For example, a device may feature a headset that displays a simulated three-dimensional environment to a user via stereoscopic displays, where coordinated output of the displays enables a binocular display with the simulation of depth. Such environments may be presented in isolation of the physical environment of the user (e.g., completely blocking the user's view of the physical environment and supplanting it with a view of the virtual environment), or may incorporate aspects of the physical environment of the user (e.g., an augmented reality headset, such as a pair of glasses or goggles, may overlay visual output over particular objects in the physical environment; and/or a “video pass-through” device may capture an image of the physical environment and annotate it with additional content while displaying it to the user).
Within such virtual environments, it may be desirable to present the graphical user interfaces of one or more applications, and several techniques exist to combine an application environment of an application with the virtual environment. As a first such example, the virtual environment may receive a flat, two-dimensional view of the application environment that may be displayed within the virtual environment in the manner of a two-dimensional painting or window. As a second such example, the virtual environment may allow the user to request a transition to an immersive application environment, wherein the three-dimensional application environment supplants the virtual environment. That is, the user may request to transition from an exclusive view of the virtual environment to an exclusive view of the application environment. As a third such example, the virtual environment may permit a holographic view, in which a set of application models from the application are integrated with the objects of the virtual environment. For example, the application environment may present a set of objects comprising a scene, and the virtual environment may receive metadata descriptors of all such objects and may insert them into the virtual environment.